Sonic Mania Gets a Collector's Edition

In celebration of Sonic's 25th anniversary in July, SEGA announced two new Sonic titles: Sonic Mania and Project Sonic. Coincidentally, 2016 also marks my 25th anniversary of spending way too much money on video games and collector's items, just like the one that was announced for Mania.

The designers of the collector's edition will be pushing the nostalgia buttons of gamers old enough to have owned a SEGA Genesis, with a Genesis-style special edition box, 12" Sonic Statue sitting atop a SEGA Genesis base and SEGA cartridge cast with a gold ring included. The base will even make everyone's favorite "SEEGAA" sound upon being turned on. The game itself will be included via a download code in the form of a metallic collector's card.

The collector's edition is already available for pre-order at retailers like Amazon and GameStop at the price of US$69.99. Based on this information, we can surmise that the standard download of the game will probably be at a $40 price point, and there will be no physical copies whatsoever.

But there is bad news for a large portion of the Sonic community — the collector's edition is currently a North American exclusive. Whether there will be a different edition announced for other parts of the world, or whether this edition will making its way to non-NA fans in due course, is not currently clear. Sonic Mania and its collector's edition have no known release date aside from the tentative window of spring 2017.